Call to arms – Own your task

Do you really like the activity stream and have ideas on how to improve it? Are you working on a site where you’re beefing up Private Messages and want to contribute some code back to the project? Maybe you’re just really good at blogging and want to share some BuddyPress experiences?

Now’s your chance to help the BuddyPress core team get things done.

If there’s a task you want to *own* in BuddyPress, let’s start by talking about it here first. Later we’ll move onto development chats, etc… but for now I want to get a feel for who wants to commit to doing what.

What the default theme really needs is a Theme Options Panel like many “premium” WP themes.

The only thing harder than modifying a BP theme is updating it later. Typically I’m not a fan of Theme Options Panels because they add extra bloat and database calls, but in the case of BP that would be a trade-off I would take. You can just make your changes and not have to worry about keeping track of all of them at update time.

For the future, if it would be appropriate for the bundled BuddyPress theme to have an options panel (with the same type of idea as twentyeleven), I think it could make sense. However, always keep in mind Decisions not options. But for BP 1.3, bearing in mind that we want to have a beta as soon as we can manage, I am not convinced there is enough development time*.

What are the options that you would propose to have in a theme options panel?

Layout Manager (post area size, sidebar size, sidebar location, number of sidebars) (should also be able to have different layouts for each page/posts)

Sidebar Manager (different sidebars on different pages)

Hook Manager (a place to input php and html without needing to edit the functions.php)

Several Widget Locations

That’s just off the top of my head.

I know many that are not well versed in css would like custom H tags, text size, color, etc., but for me if there is a easy way to add custom css I can do without other css options.

The options should not necessarily make customizing easier. The goal should be making upgrading easier. Most people that use the theme will have some basic understanding of css and php, unlike most WP users. You don’t want to get carried away with it and end up like those slow, bloated premium WP themes full of endless database calls.

thanks @djpaul for the instructions. We will write a patch hopefully until Friday.

I guess some things were misunderstood… to switch from right to left is easy done by css, but has nothing to do with the double sidebar conflict we need to avoid, if a plugin comes with a sidebar and we add one in the footer too.

I guess best is just to write the patch and check if it fits the needs.

To have an option page is a great idea, but more a feature for me than a bugfix. I’d like to concentrate on the basics first. Actually, to move the sidebar in the footer is one step to have options built in much more easy.

For the future, I believe the bbpress way of handling templates files is a good example and like I understood, the idea behind is that we will have no need of header, footer, sidebars and so on, we just deliver the content part and make themedesign much easier this way.

I’d love someone to help with a quick review and fixes for accessibility issues for BP-Default 1.3. There is unlikely to be time to do a 100% full sweep, but every little improvement helps. I’ve made some initial tickets:

There is no shortage of actions and filters that can be used, and there’s no way to add functionality to a website without writing some kind of code to do it. If someone wants a hook manager, they’d have better luck using Pods or some other library purpose built for it.

This way you could just simply paste whatever code/html you wanted inserted into the Hook without having to touch the functions.php. It would serve 2 purposes. First, it would make it much easier for those that get nervous editing php files and/or don’t like writing php code. Second, (and most importantly) you don’t have to remember and hunt down all your php edits when it comes time to update.